


Constructive Criticism

by Flightless_Bird



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood, Desert Bluffs, I don’t know what else to tag, Implied Violence, Strexcorp, business meetings, kevin likes to stop by meetings and help “persuade” people, lauren is a jerk, takes place some time before Strex tried to take over Night Vale, these meetings go about as well as you think they would
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-24
Updated: 2018-01-24
Packaged: 2019-03-08 19:43:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13465233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flightless_Bird/pseuds/Flightless_Bird
Summary: “Mr. Stangerson here,” Lauren said, pointing, “has brought up some concerns to me that I think you could help us address.”Joseph stammered, wringing his hands. “W—well, not really concerns, so much as—”“He’s mentioned that he thinks some of our workers should be…terminated, for lack of a better term. Including our very own Voice of Desert Bluffs.”Kevin grinned, showing off rows of sharpened teeth. “Oh?”—In which Kevin is called in to help a coworker during a Strexcorp business meeting.





	Constructive Criticism

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for fun because Kevin is my favorite character and I just wanted to fool around with writing him and some Strex antics a bit. But I ended up finishing it and decided to post it on here :3  
> Hope you like it! Thanks for reading!

“I don’t know about the rest of us, but personally, I believe this is the best choice for moving forward with Strexcorp’s business.”

  
At the end of Joseph’s speech, the conference room descended into an uneasy silence. Well, not uneasy, Lauren thought, no one was ever uneasy here at Strexcorp, it was such an…unproductive emotion. No, tense, might have been a better word for this emotion, prepared. Yes, prepared for the outcome of Joseph Stangerson’s idea. That man, always coming up with the funniest ways of improving Strex’s business. He was trying to be productive at least, and Lauren could appreciate that.

  
But as for his idea…

  
Well, it could use some tweaking.

  
“I’m sorry, Joseph, but I don’t think the rest of us here are quite on the same page as you.” Lacing her fingers together beneath her chin, Lauren leaned her elbows on the table and smiled.

  
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he replied at once. “I can explain in a better way, I suppose. What I'm proposing is a fresh start, if you may, with—”

  
“What you are proposing,” Lauren said firmly, “is the firing of a few very integral parts of Strecorp’s employees.”

  
Sensing something in her tone, a few of the others around the table shot Joseph quick glances. Mary smiled pleasantly as she circled her finger in the scarlet droplets upon the tabletop. Joseph swallowed visibly, but straightened in his seat. Still trying to live up to his full potential and stick by his plan, silly as it may be. Bless his little soul. “W—well, with all due respect, Ms. Mallard, these employees have been known to cause multiple problems for Strex in the past,” he explained. “I mean, the Smith family always needs to be reprogrammed, Harold loses paperwork, Samantha almost blew a fuse a day ago—”

  
“But I didn’t,” Samantha put in from a couple seats down, her grin wide and proud, almost reaching the bolts screwed in above her auditory receptors.

  
“—and the re-education of the Desert Bluffs radio host has to be redone at least twice a month,” Joseph finished, ignoring her.

  
Lauren’s eyebrows raised minutely and she tapped her pen on the red-stained tabletop. _Multiple complaints of hardworking employees and Strexcorp’s system, tsk tsk, Mr. Stangerson_. Trying for an apologetic look, she tilted her head at her poor little subordinate. “Joseph, I’m sorry you feel this way, especially about so many of our hardworking staff,” she told him. He opened his mouth, to argue possibly, and she continued, “but they _are_ , in fact, some of our most hardworking staff. There are a few bugs now and again, but Strex has always been prepared to remedy them. The minor setbacks now and again are more than worth the work we have been provided by these people.”

  
“But surely we could reach far more people if we were to dispose of—”

  
“There are no issues with our employees that Strexcorp can’t handle.”

  
“The employees _are_ the issues though.”

  
At this, more than one person in the room murmured amongst themselves. What a thing to suggest; arguing with Lauren when she clearly laid out her opinions, suggesting that loyal, productive employees be gotten rid of, just for some easily fixable problems.

  
Lauren gave a slight sigh. It was always a shame when one of her workers reached this point. Too much ambition, too much of a need to change. It wasn’t Joseph’s fault though. He just wasn’t realizing the full extent of what he was suggesting. Just needed a little bit of help, that was all.

  
“Mr. Stangerson, your opinion is of course valuable to us,” Lauren said, folding her hands on the table over her clipboard. “And we would love to help you as much as we can with your idea. Perhaps we can meet a compromise.” Lifting a decisive finger, she plucked up her phone. “I think this would be a great time to bring in one of our most valuable employees to give his voice to the matter. As a matter of fact, this will work perfectly; after all, he is one of the ones you had thought might need to be replaced.”

  
At this, Joseph paled. His smile never wavered, but it did go a bit crooked near the edges. A show of concern then for his company, how sweet. “I don’t think that we need to distract from his—”

  
“Oh, it won’t be a distraction in the least. He would love to give his time to a Strex business meeting.” Lauren tapped on her screen and let it go on speaker phone. It was picked up almost immediately and she spoke first—much more efficient when Lauren spoke first when calling one of her team. “Kevin, hi,” she greeted cheerfully. “We’re holding a meeting at the moment and Mr. Stangerson here has suggested such an interesting idea. It actually involves you, how kind of him to think of you, hm? I was wondering if you would like to offer your voice to the situation.”

  
A charmed laugh floated from the speakers. “Lauren, how thoughtful of you! I would love to join a Strexcorp meeting! I’ll be right over!”

  
“Make sure to grab your, ah, supplies, we might be needing them,” Lauren put in before he could hang up.

  
There was a high giggle, followed by a “yeah, sure!” before she locked her phone again. Lacing her fingers together under her chin, she grinned sweetly over at Joseph. “Not to worry, Mr. Stangerson,” she assured. “We’ll be addressing some of your complaints shortly and I’m sure we’ll find a solution that works best for both you and Strex.”

  
Joseph looked even paler, if possible. “Great.”

-x-x-x-

It took a total of three minutes and twelve seconds for the knock to sound at the conference room door. Lauren didn’t bother to look up from her paperwork, but she caught Joseph’s head whip around out of the corner of her eye. Her smile nearly widened, but she managed to hold it in check. “That should be him,” she announced, setting down her pen. “Come right on in, Kev!”

  
The door swung open grandly, revealing the Voice of Desert Bluffs, all smiling teeth and glowing eyes. The gold irises brightened further when he spotted Lauren. “Lauren!” Kevin greeted, with a little wave. “Oh, is this your meeting?” The rest of the gathered employees nodded and offered their own waves as well. Kevin swept his gaze over all of them, moving to shut the door behind him. “How productive you all look! Great job!”

  
“Well, they certainly are trying,” Lauren replied. Joseph gulped audibly across from her. Ignoring this for now, she cocked her head at their radio host. “I hope we didn’t keep you from your work, though. Don’t you have to write notes and rehearse for your show this evening?”

  
“I finished that up early today,” Kevin answered, switching his red-stained baseball bat from one hand to the other. He idly leaned against it as he went on, “I still have to edit out a few things, but other than that, I’m free. And I _always_ want to be available to help my fellow Strexcorp employees.”

  
“Well, I’m glad to hear it! Mr. Stangerson here,” Lauren said, pointing, “has brought up some concerns to me that I think you could help us address.”

  
Joseph stammered, wringing his hands. “W—well, not really concerns, so much as—”

  
“He’s mentioned that he thinks some of our workers should be…terminated, for lack of a better term. Including our very own Voice of Desert Bluffs.”

  
Kevin grinned, showing off rows of sharpened teeth. “Oh?”

  
“Maybe you’d like to help me explain to him why it is that we need to keep employees like you here at Strex,” Lauren suggested.

  
“I’d love to!” Swinging his bat up, Kevin rested the end of it on his shoulder and paced a couple of steps into the room. Joseph seemed to shrink into his chair the closer Kevin got; the radio host loomed over him quite literally like a shadow, what with his jet skin and charcoal sclera.

  
“I—I don’t want to offend…” Joseph trailed off worriedly.

  
“Don’t worry about that at all,” Lauren said with a flap of her hand. “Kevin is very good with taking in the opinions of his coworkers.” Joseph’s smile was still lopsided, so she added, “if it makes it easier, you can just point out what you think Kevin could work on. That way, you’d be able to see if your idea is as sensible as you believe it to be.”

  
Hesitant, Joseph snuck a glance up at Kevin, standing just a bit away from his chair, and then nodded. “Okay…um… I mean—” He swiped a hand over his hair. “People sometimes call into the station and you always take the call. It doesn’t matter if it’s about what’s happening though, you just listen to whatever they have to say. It can be distracting from the news, I guess?”

  
Chuckling as though Joseph was incredibly blind, Kevin slid his bat from his shoulder to lean against it on the floor once more. “With all due respect, Joseph—can I call you Joseph?—anything that people have to say is considered ‘news’ to the Desert Bluffs community and it is my job to report all of their news as accurately as possible.”

  
“I see. That makes sense.” Joseph paused, thinking. “Uh. Oh yes, there is the matter of, um. Your Strexpet.”

  
“Aw, yes, the little darling…”

  
“Yes. Him. You’ve gone on tangents about him before that are quite distracting as well, and they can last for a long time. I mean, the last time it happened, we were listening for fifteen minutes about how you’d forced it into eating mice.”

  
Kevin blinked. “I would think that that is news.”

  
“But it’s personal. And sometimes, it’s just about what it ate that day. It’s not even, well, cute.”

  
“I have heard from many people who would beg to differ,” Kevin sniffed.

  
Joseph was starting to look a little trapped. Lauren twirled her pen in her fingers and remained pleasantly silent.   
“Okay.” Joseph twiddled his thumbs a bit. Then he pointed at Kevin’s baseball bat with a slightly shaking finger. “Oh—You make this weird noise any time someone mentions blood.”

  
Straightening up, Kevin slipped the bat behind his back. “I do?” he asked, clearing his throat.

  
“Yes. You do.”

  
“Huh. Funny. Never noticed that.”

  
“How could you not notice that?”

  
“How could _you_ notice such a small thing like that?”

  
“So you admit you do it.”

  
Humming noncommittally, Kevin adjusted his tie with a hand and turned just the slightest bit pink.

  
Joseph let it drop with a shrug. His gaze wandered over toward Lauren. “I don’t think I really had much else to talk about,” he ventured. Then he brightened up. “Except the re-education part. Like I said, Kevin’s re-education has to be redone at least twice every month and it’s really costing us a lot of—”

  
With a sudden _bang_ , the bat collided with the table between Joseph and Marion. Joseph jumped with a tiny squeak, biting it off as his whole body tensed. At the other side of the table, Lauren busied herself with her notes.

  
Leaning down by Joseph’s ear, Kevin grinned broadly, eyelids lowered to make his expression sinister. “I’m sorry, Mr. Stangerson?” His voice slunk from his tongue into the room and Joseph shuddered.

  
“W—what?” He had to force himself to meet Kevin’s gaze.

  
“I thought I heard you saying something about my—” Kevin tilted his head, a crease between his brows, “—re-education. Which is funny,” he added on a high laugh. “Because I’m sure you know as well as anyone that that is _such_ a personal topic for any Strexcorp employee.”

  
Joseph had gone white, eyes darting between Kevin and the stains on the end of his bat. “B—but you relapse more than any of—” His words choked off as the bat skidded along the table, reaching him and coming up to tap on his shoulder.

  
“‘Relapse?’” Kevin repeated, a note of danger slipping into his tone.

  
Lauren tsked and scribbled a note next to Joseph’s name on her sheet. Mentioning a valued worker’s relapses back into the darkness before the Smiling God. Disrespectful. Everybody knew the strength of such a darkness and that the Smiling God fought hard to retrieve those people back again.

  
But that was all right. Soon, Joseph would see the error of his ways and could be reminded of his hardworking, productive self.

  
If Joseph bent down any farther in his seat, he was going to topple right off the side. Kevin’s voice had pitched down to that razor almost-growl Lauren recognized from that time he’d gotten upset with his Strexpet misbehaving. “I think you might want to _rethink_ your opinion on that one, Joseph.” He lifted the bat up to Joseph’s chin, tipping his head up. “After all, we all know how _thoughtless_ it is to the Smiling God to judge one of his loyal workers.”

  
Joseph nodded vigorously, bumping his chin against the baseball bat. “You’re absolutely right,” he stuttered, voice hiked up two octaves. Then he coughed into his hand, brought himself together. “You’re right. I see that now. It was foolish of me to suggest that you aren’t capable of your work. I’m sorry.” The last sentence was almost a question, as he grimaced up at Kevin in hopeful apology.

  
A couple seconds ticked past, Kevin’s lip still curled to show a flicker of fang.

  
Then he seemed to digest what had been said and the expression was wiped away by his smile. “Okay! I accept your apology!” he announced, dropping the bat from Joseph’s face. Joseph blew out a shaky breath and watched as Kevin smoothed down his vest cheerily. “Thank you for your opinions though,” Kevin went on. “I’ll be sure to use them to be even more productive for our wonderful company!”

  
“G—glad I could help a little.”

  
_That worked even better than I thought!_ Satisfied, Lauren clapped her hands together. “Well then! I’m glad you were able to take something valuable from this, Mr. Stangerson! We can all work to perform better in our jobs here at Strexcorp, but we can’t get better if we don’t stay and work as hard as possible. I’m happy that you could see that in the end.” At Joseph’s small nod, she turned to Kevin. “You go ahead back over to the radio station now, Kevin,” she told him. “It looks like the best of your persuasive abilities could be saved for another time.” She glanced down at his bat. “But I’m sure they’ll be needed with our next meeting with our company partners next week. They do tend to be a stubborn group.”

  
And with that, another Strexcorp meeting had gone well.

-x-x-x-

Outside of the conference room doors, Kevin fell back against the wall and turned his bat over in his hands. Sometimes Strex meetings could be so exciting! So many minds at work and interesting ideas… There was a lot less blood than usual this time though. Pity. It was always a helpful factor and quite beautiful; really added some life to the room.

  
He swiped his thumb across an old stain worked into the wood and remembered who he had persuaded into joining Strex’s networking team two weeks ago. And the sound their bones had made. He shivered and a little whimper left his throat.

  
The sound of the door clicking shut and a pointed cough made him whip around. Joseph was leaving the conference room, eyebrows raised as he regarded Kevin in the hallway. He took a breath. “Did you just—?”

  
“I’mlateforthenews.” Kevin hurried away as fast as possible, face burning and hand clenched around his bat.

  
Yep. Another Strexcorp meeting gone well. 


End file.
